The fight continues... but maybe not for long.

Well, I've been officially told that my class TOK Blog is great, and seems very helpful and educational for the kids involved. The district says that I've presented a good case for having Blogger unblocked for the district. They say that they haven't said "NO" yet, but for now... "NO".

Aware of the fact that I have potential partner schools in Israel, New Jersey, Philly, and Colorado, they are suggesting that I move the conversations into "Blackboard", a closed community software program that the district has paid for (surprise, surprise) and if another school, no matter where they are, wants to join, we can add them through our district and the hundreds of kids can just log onto Blackboard through our district's web site. Seems convenient for all. I'm sure the difficulty of getting kids to access a blog, give their free time, post great questions, thoughtfully respond, and remain engaged will in no way be hampered by the hoops that we would then ask them to jump through, rather than it being a web-based, easily-accessible blog that all can join and participate easily in.

I really appreciate the support in trying to build a national (possibly international) conversation.

Huh...?

Sorry... needed to rant.

Justification in Teaching

While watching all of the political ads, commentary, and debates, it disturbs me how little people actually justify the knowledge they share with the public. I recently asked my TOK students to watch one of their teachers and consider how they justify the knowledge they are attempting to impart. The students then wrote thier own intepretations of what they witnessed (w/out using Teacher's names of course).

It was scary to see how many of them had teachers who seemed to only have Authority behind them as the reason for their students to trust and believe what they were "teaching". It either came from a book, college classes, etc.

This made we wonder why we accept this in education. Why do we teach with so little justification other than "well that's what I was taught"? I would love to say I never fall into this but that would be naive. Especially in teaching science, I have to trust the experts for much of what I "know".

I think this is a poor lesson for kids to learn yet we reinforce it everywhere in society. Why do we accept this as reasonable?